


Fennel

by ossseous (ozean)



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Fantasizing, Finger Sucking, Frottage, Introspection, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Orgasm Denial, Religious Content, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 08:54:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13291425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozean/pseuds/ossseous
Summary: There is a spot, sloping down into the sea and obstructed from view and he hates and loves it all the same. It’s a privacy he longs for, and does not believe he deserves. He watches the way the sun blinks slowly back and forth from life at the whims of the clouds. He wonders, as the wind rolls up the hill, how such a gift from God would even grace his cheeks. There’s an equal measure of secrecy there, of obscurity and the shame of feeling that, when gone from the eyes of the pious little monks, he can hide from the eyes of God as well.





	Fennel

There are words that exist just beyond his reach. They dangle there, enticing in a way. But the mute doesn’t know that—even if he could pluck them free from those dangling branches of his thoughts—he would even reach for them. Silence has become such an integral part of him. A comfort of fortification. His voice the only thing left he has power over as everything else belongs to God now.

And he doesn’t quite know how this all came to be, really. How he came to be there, in that exact moment, or how he came to be there at all.

He remembers the day he washed ashore, yes. It’s a persistent memory of parched longing and an even more persistent summer sun. Brother Diarmuid had been the one to find him then. His first sight of the boy, not yet fourteen, had been a silhouette cast against the afternoon sun. In those blanched moments, weakly clinging to consciousness, he thought the boy bore a halo of sun rays. He thought he felt blessed as his hand cupped his cheek and coaxed him back to life. The seawater dripping from his curls felt like little drops of sun in that moment. At least they did until the clouds rolled on and tugged the sun from the sky. It revealed that the boy was no divine being, just another child. Naivete and innocence painfully on display in the frantic worry of his eyes as he called to his fellow monks down the beach.

But it was providence all the same.

The overall journey, though—the choices he made to bring him there—they are all lost. He could not discard them so completely, but in his daily service, they do not matter. The weight of his sin gets lost under the burden of his labor.

But he can’t help but remain isolated from the brothers. They all know who he is. They all know what he must atone for. Even the boy, surely protected from the realities of war, has some inkling of his deeds and just what it is they pray for when they keep him in their thoughts.

So he spends his time, free from labor, along the hills of the monastery. There is a spot, sloping down into the sea and obstructed from view and he hates and loves it all the same. It’s a privacy he longs for, and does not believe he deserves. He watches the way the sun blinks slowly back and forth from life at the whims of the clouds. He wonders, as the wind rolls up the hill, how such a gift from God would even grace his cheeks.

There’s an equal measure of secrecy there, of obscurity and the shame of feeling that, when gone from the eyes of the pious little monks, he can hide from the eyes of God as well.

But he never remains alone for long. Not since Diarmuid discovered his spot one day during his foraging. Perhaps the other brothers know of it as well, but unlike Diarmuid, who since the day of his arrival never seemed to shake his fascination with the mute, the others rarely speak to him beyond requests for a service. Would never dream of joining him. They can all see his sins in the tremble of his hands, in the aversion of his eyes. He knows some of them may even fear him. Only the Abbot and Brother Ciarán occasionally engage him in some one-sided conversation. But even then it’s little more than the thoughts of men prone to thinking aloud.

Diarmuid flops down into the damp grass at his side. The brittle blades are almost flat from the near constant rush of salty wind that flows up the hill’s bank. It makes a good bed. The mute won’t complain of the pallet the monks have gifted him to sleep on—it’s far better than the rocks for pillows he once knew. But the grass, springy and willing to give beneath his weight, is almost a luxury. Perhaps one he doesn’t quite deserve.

The brother rarely gifts himself moments of rest like this, though, and the mute has come to long for the occasions he does. He had done it more often back when the mute first arrived. Back when he was still young and unable to smother that spark of youthful rebellion. But older now, he seems less willing to give into the temptation of idleness, even on comfortable mornings in the scant amount of time allowed between the Liturgy of the Hours. He has become as dutiful as any other good monk in the service of the lord.

“Will it rain, you think?” he asks, looking up at the clouds and frowning. He knows there will be no answer, and yet he asks these questions nonetheless. Sometimes he thinks his endless rambling and the boundless curiosity he only ever exposes to the mute, may be the only thing keeping him human. Without that acknowledgement, perhaps he would become little more than a pack mule.

Perhaps, he thinks, that wouldn’t be the worst thing for someone like him.

“The roads were just beginning to dry,” he mumbles, trying so hard not to sound displeased and discontent by the prospect of mud to hamper their daily chores.

Diarmuid turns onto his stomach and the mute watches as he starts to divide his bounty of herbs into bunches, long fingers deftly picking dirt and useless blades of grass, flicking them from the basket.

It’s a kind of compulsion he has to bite back against—the desire to reach out, to touch those simple hands. They are nothing like his own. Not calloused not by the reins of a destrier or the grip of a sword, but by the garden spade and the basket he carries back from the fields.

He almost doesn’t notice when Diarmuid stops his task and holds his hand out to him. For a moment the mute worries that insanity breached him, that he had spoken those desires somehow. He even, if just for a second, fears the boy is bewitched and can read his thoughts. It would mean he knows all those dark thoughts that swim in the muddy waters of his mind.

But as Diarmuid twists his hand over for his inspection, the mute realizes he had just been staring at them so intently, that even a simpleton would have noticed his interest. And Diarmuid is all too willing to give into the mute’s curiosity.

So the mute takes the hand gently in his own.

His own are about as clean as they will ever get. The grime remains stuck—maybe permanently—in the whorls of his fingerprints, in the creases of his knuckles. How much of it is blood from years past? The little bits and flecks he would never truly be able to wash from his skin?

Diarmuid’s are only stained green from the herbs. They smell strongly of the earth, of fields. It reminds him of rest. The kind they’d get on the roadside after a long day of riding all in the name of God. Many times, he didn’t bother to even set up camp, he just drop into the nearest clear spot and drift off to sleep and dream of home. Dream of the days he once knew, back when he was still innocent.

The mute brings those pungent fingers to his face, slowly, hesitant as he breathes the scent in deep. Boney knuckles brush along his beard, bump almost carelessly along his lips, and the mute can’t help but shut his eyes at the touch. The smell of fennel is sharpest, strongest, it beats out the scent of earth that clings to Diarmuid’s skin like a blessing.

And those thoughts surface. The ones that scare him most. The ones that make his silence an unconditional requirement.

_If only you knew how I worship you, Brother Diarmuid. Not God. You._

When he knows he has held the hand for too long, he lets it go, drops his own down to his chest. He expects Diarmuid to pull it back, to go back to his task. Maybe the mute might take a short nap before he mucks the mule’s stable. But his fingers stay. He feels the presence of them lingering until, to the mute’s surprise, two fingers brush along his bottom lip. The touch is feather-light. Almost nonexistent. Almost so frail he thinks he might have imagined it. But they get braver, they trace the dried, chapped skin of his lip with a purpose.

He stays still and only carefully does he part his lips to pull in air, desperately reminding himself to keep breathing. And just as he does, Diarmuid slips his fingers nervously—cautiously—inside his mouth.

Just the tips of them at first, fingernails scraping against his teeth. There’s a pause in time that feels as though seconds are suddenly able to stretch into minutes and Diarmuid stalls. It takes the mute a moment to realize what he seeks. Permission.

Approval.

So he opens his mouth wider, allows Diarmuid access to explore, jaw loosening each centimeter those digits claim of his mouth.

His own breathing speeds up and against his own wishes, his eyes open. He doesn’t really know what he expects to find. But it’s not Diarmuid’s hooded eyes fixated on where his fingers disappear into his mouth. He lets his lips close around them, his own heart jumping when Diarmuid bites his lip and pushes his fingers deeper.

The pads of his fingers press with tentative curiosity, rubbing along the flat length of his tongue, and the mute want to groan at the contact, revel at the earthy taste scraping along his taste buds. It’s almost too much of a sensation as Diarmuid repositions, sinking down beside him, presses the length of his body along his side.

Diarmuid’s leg lifts, only a little, draping across one of his one almost thoughtlessly. Only then, in the minute press of his hips, the mute can feel the hard press of his cock against his side. He fights the urges that well in him then. The one that tells him to push Diarmuid off before it goes to far. The one that tells him to pull Diarmuid atop him, to slot his own cock, desperately hard, in the space right alongside Diarmuid’s and to rock into him, to chase after that relieving friction with a kind of greed they’ve both renounced.

But he doesn’t move an inch. His eyes flutter shut once more, and he prays that Diarmuid will slide his leg even higher, that he will press his knee into his lap, give him something, anything, to rub against so he doesn’t have to beg for it.

There’s movement and for a moment the mute thinks that maybe his prayers have been answered, but Diarmuid sits up on an elbow, tucking his other arm along the length of the mute’s collar bone. There’s no pressure to it, the boy could hardly dream of really pinning him down, but he feels powerless under that fragile weight all the same as Diarmuid pushes his fingers even deeper, and the mute takes every inch of them.

And just like that, he draws his fingers out.

The mute’s eyes open and he half thinks he might see the brother scampering off, a ridged line of shame in his shoulders as he crests the hill and disappears from the mute’s sight.

But Diarmuid remains. Fingers find their way into his hair, tangling, nails scratching almost gently against his scalp as the fingers, now hovering over his lips and slick with saliva, push back into his mouth.

Just then, Diarmuid finally does climb atop him. He doesn’t settle in the mute’s lap as he wishes, but lowers onto his stomach instead. When he looks up, he finds Diarmuid’s eyes locked onto his own, his stare bewildered as he fits his cock into the mute’s hip. Neither of them moves just then. Some gulls cry down at the beach, the tide breaks in a distant, endless and muffled roar. And without warning, Diarmuid ruts into him just as he pushes his fingers all the way back in.

He makes a rhythm of it. At first slow, steady. Fingers slipping in to his knuckles as he thrusts into the mute’s hip and the mute wishes Diarmuid would shift just the slightest bit lower so he might rub into that warm juncture of his thigh. He can’t even recall the last time he had been so hard, so close to coming and without a single touch to give him relief. It’s almost overwhelming. It’s almost enough to bring tears to his eyes as Diarmuid braces his other hand into his chest and balls the material of his shirt into his fist. From the sharp, sniffled inhales he suspects Diarmuid is as close to crying as he is and for the first time in so long there are so many things he wants to say out loud.

_I want to feel you. I want to kiss you. I want you inside of me. I want inside of you. I want you. I want you._

_I want you._

And then it all stops.

It takes him a moment to realize why Diarmuid has frozen atop him. But then the bell for the Sixth Hour rings out again, echoing faintly off the nearby cliffs, sound rolling down the hill on its path to get devoured by the sounds of the sea.

Diarmuid’s fingers slip free and hover, still wet, as he peers up the hill. His cock is still hard, straining where it’s pressed between their stomachs. There are so many things the mute wishes he could do then. But even if he wants to grab a hold of him, yank him down and kiss him until they are both desperate for air, he could never do such a thing. Monks cannot be late for prayer.

So when Diarmuid clambers off of him, snatching his basket before sprinting up the hill, he doesn’t cling after him. He doesn’t voice all those words tumbling around his head. _Please stay. Never leave. Come back to me._

He just stares up at the sky and prays that taste of fennel and earth lingers on his tongue forever.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this really fast because I wanted to get it done and up before the semester started so sorry for any mistakes. i swear it DID proof read like 3 times.
> 
> Also I'm on [tumblr](http://ossseous.tumblr.com) if you wanna yell at me about these two.


End file.
